Radioland Murders

Radioland Murders (1994) This movie is rarely talked about in Hollywood and you will have a hard time finding it in the video stores or seeing it on TV. This is one of George Lucas’ (Star Wars) few failures. Released to the big screen in 1994, no one saw it and the critics panned it. Naturally, I loved it. It is a 30s style screwball comedy with the requisite slapstick and pratfalls. It concerns the opening night of a 4th radio network with a nationwide broadcast from studios in Chicago just before World War II. Starring Brian Benben and Mary Stuart Masterson as a married couple both working at the station and also working on a few marital problems, it careens off in many directions at a fast clip. Someone is killing off the studio staff, owners and cast and the fairly inept cops have a time running back and forth chasing suspects while the show is going on. Populated with almost every ‘B’ grade actor in Hollywood, including Corbin Bernsen, Michael McKean, Jeffrey Tambor, Anita Morris, Ned Beaty, Bobcat Goldthwait, Christopher Lloyd, Harvey Korman and even George Burns and Rosemary Clooney, it parodies many of the old radio shows of that era. Perhaps, that is why it didn’t do well, as most people in the potential audience probably wouldn’t remember what a live radio broadcast was like or even sounded like. In any event, if you like those old screwball comedies or like movies about radio, this is one for you. The movie is rated PG for: death by hanging, death by falling, death by poison, death by….(well, there is a lot of death for a PG movie but all in good fun), giant penguins, idiot cops, Spike Jones parodies, Lone Ranger parodies, Lash LaRue parodies, Billy Barty singing, and for the low cut-ness of the VaVaVoom girl’s dress.